ST. LAURENT

PROVIDENCE — Anthony M. “The Saint” St. Laurent, a longtime capo regime in the Patriarca crime family, is a physical wreck whose health has been in a freefall for the past 20 years.

At a sentencing hearing Friday in U.S. District Court, Assistant U.S. Attorney James H. Leavey suggested that a “$500- to $600-” a-day cocaine habit was a key factor in leaving the mobster in such poor medical condition.

Leavey dropped the bomb about St. Laurent’s drug use after Dr. Marc S. Weinberg testified about a series of medical ailments that St. Laurent suffers from, including hypertension, kidney failure, intestinal cancer and chronic bowel problems.

“In all honesty, unequivocally, [St. Laurent] is absolutely the sickest guy I have ever seen,” said Weinberg, who has treated him for 20 years. “I have no one else like him.”

Friday’s hearing was scheduled to sentence St. Laurent, 65, of 2 Rotary Drive, Johnston, to prison for conspiring several months ago to extort $100,000 from two Massachusetts men.

Judge William E. Smith continued the hearing to give the government more time to find a suitable prison to treat St. Laurent for his various ailments. A new date has yet to be set for the sentencing.

At a plea hearing in July, Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter F. Neronha said the government had evidence that St. Laurent directed two men to collect the money and, if the two victims did not pay at least $50,000, to “bash” the victims.

FBI agents and detectives from the Rhode Island State Police and Providence police arrested St. Laurent the next day.

Friday, U.S. Marshals pushed St. Laurent, who wore a neck brace, in a wheelchair into the courtroom on the third floor of the federal courthouse. He wore prison-issued khakis and gingerly climbed out of the wheelchair and into his seat at the defense table.

In the spectators section behind him sat several state, local and federal investigators. Also in attendance were St. Laurent’s wife, and their son and daughter.

The son, also named Anthony St. Laurent, has spent time in federal prison.

Leavey, the prosecutor, recommended that St. Laurent be sentenced to 46 months in prison, the low end of the federal sentencing guidelines, for taking responsibility for his crimes and for avoiding a trial. Under the guidelines, St. Laurent faced up to 57 months in prison.

Leavey also asked the judge to sentence St. Laurent to an additional year in prison for violating the terms of his supervised release from a past federal conviction.

John F. Cicilline, St. Laurent’s lawyer, had Weinberg take the stand to tell the court about the mobster’s medical problems. Cicilline was seeking a lighter sentence or the possibility of having St. Laurent serve his time in a prison medical facility instead of a traditional prison.

Weinberg, who is on the faculty at Brown University Medical School, spent about 30 minutes detailing a myriad of illnesses that afflict St. Laurent. The mobster, who once took as many as 40 enemas a day, suffers from a chronic bowel disease that has taken him to medical specialists in Boston, Baltimore, Chicago and London.

Weinberg testified that St. Laurent needs “close, tedious laboratory and clinical monitoring.”

Leavey suggested that St. Laurent’s cocaine addiction and the fact that he has been a heavy smoker caused many of the mobster’s problems. “Isn’t it fair to say that he doesn’t really take care of himself?” he said.

Leavey also asked Weinberg whether St. Laurent would be better off in a structured environment — prison — where he would get three meals a day, could not smoke or snort cocaine and would have a medical staff readily available.

“I don’t know about the quality of care in the Bureau of Prisons,” Weinberg said.

Smith also directed a series of questions at Weinberg, who maintained that he was “not trying to manipulate the court.”

Weinberg also said that he never talks to St. Laurent, or other patients, about their chosen profession.

“I never ask him what he did, that’s our rule,” Weinberg said. “I don’t want to know anything about his private life that made him end up here. But I don’t think they should take his health care and hang it out to dry. I feel bad when people laugh at him and the media calls him things like “Public Enema.’”

St. Laurent has spent most of the past decade in prison on gambling and extortion charges. During one of his federal prison stays, he was arrested for directing a gambling ring in Rhode Island from his prison cell in Kentucky.